This paper tests the effect of matching charitable giving in a randomized field experiment. The students at the University of Zurich have to decide, each semester, whether they wish to contribute to two social funds. The donations of the treatment group are matched by contributions of an anonymous donor. The results support the hypothesis that a matching mechanism increases contributions to a p...

When people make donations to privately provided public goods, such as charity, there may be many factors infiuencing their decisions other than altruism. As Olson (1965) noted, 'people are sometimes motivated by a desire to win prestige, respect, friendship, and other social and psychological objectives' (p. 60) or as Becker (1974) observed, 'apparent "charitable" behavior can also be motivate...

In light of recent evidence, we develop a theory of charitable giving in which donors feel social pressure from a direct solicitation. We show that equilibrium donations are concentrated around a social norm: donors below the norm increase giving while those above the norm reduce it. Despite a higher level of the public good, relatively poor and/or low altruism givers fare worse under social pr...

In order to promote public awareness and raise charitable donations for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a charity activity known as the "Ice Bucket Challenge" went "viral" from social media in the US to the rest of the world in the summer of 2014. The Challenge had an obvious impact with a large number of participants and increasing charity donations. However, the effort has ...

In some low- and middle-income countries, the national stores and public-sector health facilities contain large stocks of pharmaceuticals that are past their expiry dates. In low-income countries like Uganda, many such stockpiles are the result of donations. If not adequately monitored or regulated, expired pharmaceuticals may be repackaged and sold as counterfeits or be dumped without any thou...

organ donor card (ODC). The public seems to say one thing but does by the public are not matched by action. another. In July 1994, The Advertising Council, Inc., in conjunction with It is doubtful that the supply of cadaveric organs will ever the Coalition on Donation, launched a major promotional campaign to fully meet the demand. In fact, artificial organs (Basu-Dutt et educate the U.S. publi...

When firms give money to candidates for public office, what return can they expect on their investment? The answer may depend on the party in power, and whether it rewards longstanding contributors, pays back all donors on equal terms, or refuses to be swayed by corporate money. In this analysis of Brazil, we use a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of an electoral victory o...

This paper examines the relationship between federal research funding and private donations at 221 private and public research and doctoral universities between 1973 and 1997. As with previous studies, there is a positive relationship between these two sources of funding for these universities. This paper extends previous research by examining the effect of federal research funding across five ...

Over the past decade, West Nile virus (WNV) has spread across the United States. We aggregated blood donor data from 2010-2012 and then calculated the incidence of WNV RNA-positive donations and compared the incidence with neuroinvasive disease (NID) case data from the ArboNET surveillance system. Of 10,107,853 donations, 640 were confirmed positive. The seasonal WNV incidence rate per 100,000 ...

Previous research finds that individuals tend to donate more to charitable and non-profit organizations when their activities are publicly recognized. In this research, we find that public recognition may discourage individual giving in certain cases. We conducted a field experiment to investigate how public recognition influences individual charitable giving. We designed five schemes to recogn...